1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and a wafer processing method. More particularly, it relates to a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and a wafer processing method that can detect a process error and perform feedback regarding the wafer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to manufacture a semiconductor device, various patterns such as wiring, a transistor and a capacitor are generally formed on a silicon wafer. For the purpose of forming these patterns, a photolithography process of depositing a thin film on a wafer, form a photoresist pattern on the thin film and then etching the thin film according to the photoresist pattern is usually used. The photolithography is the process of coating a photoresist onto the wafer on which the thin film is deposited, illuminating a light onto the photoresist, developing a photoresist pattern reacted to the light, and forming a specific photoresist pattern by selectively removing the photoresist. The photoresist pattern, which is formed through the photolithography process, is used as an etching mask in an etching process.
A series of inspection process is performed for inspecting the photoresist pattern formed through the photolithography process prior to the etching process. These inspection processes include a defect inspection of the photoresist pattern, an edge bead removal (EBR) inspection for removing the photoresist on an edge of the wafer, an EBR size inspection, reticule error inspection, and others. After advancing a photoresist coating process and the following processes, a worker performs monitoring of the EBR size in order to check whether the EBR size is within a set range. In other words, if a poor EBR size is detected after all processes, checking and verifying the irregular EBR size is performed too late, thereby increasing time loss and damage accordingly. Additionally, checking and verifying the EBR size has been limited to accurately perform monitoring, since it depends significantly on a level of skill of an operator. Further, it has caused problems of loss of equipment and quality deterioration of the previously advancing wafer, because proper processing was not performed up until a centering error of the wafer related to the poor EBR size was detected.